New Armis research uncovers one-third of global organizations suffered multiple security breaches over last year

November 07, 2023

Asset intelligence cybersecurity company Armis announced the findings of its Global Attack Surface Management (ASM) Research which looked into organizational trends and challenges over the past 12 months.

Research commissioned with Vanson Bourne found that global organizations are facing an unprecedented level of cyber risk due to blind spots in their environment and that security teams are being overwhelmed with significant amounts of threat intelligence data lacking actionable insights.

As a result, 61 percent of global organizations confirmed they had been breached at least once over the last 12 months, with 31 percent experiencing multiple breaches during the same period. The top four countries with organizations most likely to report being breached were the U.S., Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.

“Armis continues to warn about the evolving threat landscape and the impact of malicious cyberattacks targeting global organizations, national governments, state and local entities and society overall,” Curtis Simpson of CISO at Armis, said in a media statement. “Our research found that there’s much room for improvement in how global organizations can protect and manage their entire attack surface. It’s not a question of if, but when, an attack will occur – especially against critical infrastructure that society so heavily relies upon.”

Key findings include:

Entire organizational attack surface is not being fully monitored, introducing significant exposures and unseen cybersecurity risks.

On an average business day, 55,686 physical and virtual assets are connected to organizational networks. Global respondents shared that only 60 percent of these assets are monitored, leaving 40 percent unmonitored.
Employees increasingly are using their own assets in business environments, with clear gaps in the enforcement of BYOD policies: 22 percent of respondents report having an official BYOD policy that is not enforced across all employees, 23 percent say they either have guidelines that employees are encouraged to follow or admit they don’t have any policies or guidelines around BYOD.
Organizations, on average, can only account for around 60 percent of their assets when it comes to knowing things like asset location or the support status of these assets. Forgotten assets, like printers, can introduce critical security gaps – especially if security updates aren’t installed or patches applied.

An influx of data without automation and prioritization of threat intelligence is hindering security and IT pros’ ability to effectively remediate threats to protect the organization.

Twenty-nine percent of respondents report that their cybersecurity team is overwhelmed by cyber threat information. Respondents from Germany (38 percent) were the most likely to report this.
Just under half (45 percent) of those surveyed report using 10 or more different sources to collect data relating to threat intelligence and only between 52 percent and 57 percent of the processes relating to threat intelligence are automated on average, meaning that a lot of the work needed to make use of the intelligence is a manual effort.
Only 58 percent of the information gathered from threat intelligence sources is actionable, on average. Only 2 percent of surveyed organizations report that all of the information they gather from threat intelligence sources is actionable.

Organizations are struggling to effectively manage physical and virtual assets connected to their network using too many tools to effectively action cybersecurity plans.

Global respondents indicated that their organizations use 11 different tools to manage assets connected to their network, while 44 percent admit to still using manual spreadsheets.
Employees are able to bypass security and download applications and software onto assets without the knowledge of IT or security teams. Three-quarters (75 percent) of global organizations report that this happens at least some of the time, with a quarter (25 percent) reporting that this is happening all the time. Without complete control, management and/or visibility over these assets, organizations are facing even more risk.

“Unfortunately, there is a correlation between the large percentage of the attack surface remaining unmonitored and the high rate of breaches experienced over the past year,” continued Simpson. “Unmanaged assets represent the growing attack surface yet organizational cyber tools and programs lack the visibility to understand and manage top cyber risks, exposures and threats. Threat actors are exploiting these material blind spots to execute today’s most impactful cyberattacks. It’s critical that IT departments modernize their approach by consolidating disjointed solutions and leveraging the latest innovative technologies to enable teams with real-time, automated insights and actionable plans to help safeguard mission-critical assets from cyber threats.”

“Our research found that there’s much room for improvement in how global organizations manage their threat landscape,” said Katie Haslett, research consultant at Vanson Bourne. “Respondents surveyed for this report agreed with that assessment, sharing that proactively increasing visibility into the attack surface and further defining policies and procedures surrounding virtual and physical assets is an area of growth for their organization.”